Auburn Council Approves New Curbside Recycling Program After Ending Original Program

Weeks after cutting curbside pickup for recycling, Auburn, Maine announced a temporary pilot program to restart curbside pickups.

The city cut roughly $250,000 from the budget by discontinuing curbside pickup for recycling this past summer. This change forces residents to take their recycling to drop-off sites which they claim is inconvenient.

Auburn Mayor Jason Levesque proposed the new pilot program, which has been approved by city councilors, to address resident’s concerns. The program includes weekly curbside recycling at drop-off areas around the city. Residents can also continue to use the nearby facility to drop off recycling themselves.

The city will keep an eye on both systems and determine which is more effective.

"This is an opportunity to collect even more data just because we hadn't been collecting any of that," said Auburn Assistant City Manager Brian Wood. "There are other communities across Maine and across the country that have pretty sophisticated data collection systems with sensors and tags."

Details are still being worked out by city leaders, but they hope to have the pilot program running in the next few weeks. Money saved from suspending the original curbside recycling program is being used to support the new pilot program.

Read the full article here.